


Write it Right

by NotRoyalty



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, fluff turns to angst, kind of a five times fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-08
Packaged: 2018-02-03 20:41:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1756555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotRoyalty/pseuds/NotRoyalty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity leaves Oliver messages by writing on his arm, and he starts doing the same to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Write it Right

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Six Times Felicity Uses Post-It Notes and One Time Oliver Does](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183460) by [hope27](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hope27/pseuds/hope27). 



> This work was inspired by hope27's lovely fic about Felicity communicating with Oliver via post-it notes.

Felicity was rushing, heels clicking like tap-shoes across the concrete of the lair.

Diggle was sitting at one of the tables disassembling his gun for some reason (probably for cleaning or something, but Felicity wasn't exactly an expert on firearms and their care). 

Oliver was...

Felicity stopped rushing for a second at the bottom of the stairs to stare at him where he lay, sleeping on the cot, with his bandaged arm laying next to him. 

 _It's nothing to worry about_ , he had said.  _Just a little cut._

Felicity knew he'd had much worse, and that he'd be up and vigilantly-ing tomorrow as if nothing had happened, but there was still that annoying little tick of worry somewhere behind her throat. 

With a roll of her eyes, Felicity dropped her purse and rushed across the lair one more time, yanking open the top drawer with a resounding rattle of all the pills inside. Grabbing a pen haphazardly, she kelt down next to him and shook two pills out of two bottles. Eyes carefully trained on the sleeping Oliver, she set them on the little table and uncapped the pen. 

Moving so gingerly there wasn't a chance that Oliver, even with his reflexes, would wake, she pulled the sleeve up on his good arm and put the pen to it.

Diggle looked up when he didn't hear Felicity's heels just in time to see her standing up next to Oliver.

"See you tomorrow, Digg," she called, clicking her way back to the stairs. "Got to go pick my mother up from the airport before she spends the night there!"

Diggle returned to cleaning his gun.

When Oliver awoke, the first thing he saw was writing on his arm. 

_Take the antibiotics. -F_

The 'F' was smeared a little, but he took the pills anyway.

* * *

"There's no way around it," Felicity said, shoving the paper into his chest with what Oliver recognized as her determined expression, which meant there really was now way around it. "Queen Consolidated needs you to make this speech."

Oliver scowled, but she just looked more determined so he sat down wearily to make his way through the heinously long briefing she had prepared. "It's called a briefing because it's supposed to be brief," he called after her as she made her way to the door.

"Then maybe," she said pointedly from around the glass door, "you should have hired a _real_ assistant who has the skills to make your briefings as brief as possible."

Oliver couldn't help the little smile as her blonde ponytail swung away from him, but the smile faded as he looked down at the papers and realized he wasn't going to sleep any time soon.

It was only Felicity, however, who was awake a few hours later after the sun had long since vanished behind the horizon. She was spinning her chair absently, staring at the Arrow research on her screen with glazed eyes. There was only so much research she could do on a person, and she had thoroughly exhausted this poor fellow an hour ago, but for some reason she was still here.

The reason was sitting in his office reading the briefing he needed for his speech. Felicity knew that if he just left him to his own devices he would have abandoned it long ago. 

At the lair she was a personal internet researcher, but here she just felt like a babysitter. She still wasn't quite sure what the difference between an assistant and a babysitter was. Oliver needed her here, though, so she would stay up as late as she needed making sure he read his briefings and made his speeches.

Spinning her chair to look at him, she let her head fall back for a moment. He mirrored her position with his head against his chair, but his feet were up on his desk and his eyes were closed. 

Sighing, Felicity realized he had fallen asleep and stood, picking up a pen. 

When Oliver awoke hours later, neck sore from the position it had been in, he found more writing on his arm.

_There's a briefer briefing in your email. -F_

* * *

The evening had been a success, Oliver supposed, be it in a roundabout way. Today's thug (a bank robber) had managed to lead him on a wild chase across the city that had lead well into the night, but he was in Officer Lance's custody now. Yes, Oliver had to change out of the green suit in a moving car to meet Thea for dinner on time, but he had still made it. 

Felicity was still perched in her usual seat before the computers when he finally returned to the lair. 

"How was dinner?" she asked brightly, not taking her eyes from the screen. 

"She's still a little angry about the Merlyn thing," Oliver said, replacing his suit in its case. 

"Mm," she replied absently.

"What are you still doing here?" he asked, putting his bow away. "It's late."

"I'm updating the security protocols," she said, "I've let them be for far too long. It's mostly just sitting here waiting for the loading bar of death," she said, mimicking his vigilantly voice at the end. "Seriously it's the worst part about being an IT girl. All I need is for that bar," she jabbed her finger at it accusingly, "to get to there," she moved her finger halfway across the screen, "and then I can go home."

"I don't doubt it," Oliver said, despite his few experiences with the 'loading bar of death.'

"Are you heading home?" she asked, looking up for the first time as put his bow back.

"Got a few things to take care of first," he found himself saying.

If he went home, he knew he would just have the empty house to remind him of all the people he'd lost. There was no peace in the quiet at that house. Not like the quiet here. In the lair, Felicity's presence radiated warmth like a quiet sun in the room. 

So Oliver stayed, puttering about with his arrows until Felicity dozed off in her chair. 

He didn't realize she was asleep until the computer pinged softly, and she didn't respond. Standing, he moved around her chair to behold her relaxed features, unaware of the 'update complete' message on the screen.

With all the care in the world, Oliver slid his arms under her shoulders and knees and carried her over to the cot. He was just turning away after pulling the blanket over her when he stopped, a little smile coming onto his lips. 

Uncapping the pen on the little table, he unfolded her pale arm and wrote, _Update complete_ on it in his messy handwriting. 

* * *

When Felicity came into the office the next morning, he could still see the faint pen-marks on her arms, which made him smile, knowing that part of him was on her skin.

He even laughed when he woke up later that week to see  _Make sure it's washable next time,_ written on his arm in sharpie. 

* * *

Felicity was not happy. 

No one would be happy if they were locked in some basement with someone they weren't sure was going to wake up or not. Felicity hated seeing Oliver lying there with a gash on his head and no movement in his limbs. But she hated the masked men who had taken them more. She hated that they wouldn't let her so much as clean the cut on his head.

She hated that they had told her she would be dead before Oliver awoke. 

She hated that she didn't even know what they wanted, but Felicity didn't know what to do with herself when she hated someone so strongly that her throat burned. There was a little part of her that knew if she just sat there and did nothing, she would break down, and giving the men the satisfaction of knowing they had made her cry was the last thing she wanted. 

So she took the pen out of Oliver's pocket and started writing on his arms. 

Felicity was still writing when she heard gunshots outside, and she knew that Diggle had come through and found them. She didn't expect the door to explode inwards, tossing her back against the wall like a rag doll.

* * *

Oliver was not happy.

Felicity wasn't moving, and that was the only way he knew her: as a living, moving, warm source of life. He hated that she was lying in the hospital unconscious. 

"It's just a knock to the head," the doctors had said. "She'll wake up soon."

He still hated that the beep from the monitor was the only proof that she was still alive. Reaching out, he took her small, still hand in his, and that was when he noticed the words leading up to his wrist. Pulling up his sleeves, he realized that his arms were covered in her handwriting.

 _Oliver_ , it began.  _They told me that I would be dead by the time that you woke up. I know that Diggle is on the way to find us, but I'm really bored._ It was smudged here, like she had written something else and replaced it with 'bored.'

_I don't know who these guys are, but I don't think that they know what you do at night. I wouldn't bring it up._

There was a break here, leaving room for one of the scars on his forearms. 

 _Have you ever seen_ Galaxy Quest _?_ The writing asked after that.

 _If not, you really need to see it. But only if you've seen_ Star Trek _because if you haven't, it really isn't as funny. You'd better have seen_ Star Trek _. I know you were on an island for five years, but that's no excuse for not seeing_ Star Trek _. It's been out for ages._

There the writing on that arm ended. Moving on to the other arm, Oliver kept reading. 

_I don't know if Diggle is coming. It's been a while, and I can hear them talking in Russian._

There was a smudged break.

_I'm sorry._

Another break.

 _I lo-_ the next letter turned into a line that yanked off his arm in a quick motion.

Oliver closed his eyes, pressing his fingers over the spot on his arm. 

* * *

When Felicity awoke to the sound of a heart monitor beeping, she found Oliver with his head on the bed next to her, his hand gripping hers, and words written in silver gel pen on her arm:

_I love you._

Despite the fact that her head felt like it was full of arrows, she still smiled giddily. Looking down at Oliver's sleeping face, she wanted to wake him up and tell him that she loved him too, but she knew that as soon as he woke up, he'd do nothing but apologize. She could enjoy this moment of peace, the happy bubble from the words on her arm expanding in her like a warm balloon. 

Felicity was in no rush. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry this fic turned into kind of a train-wreck. I found out that my guinea pig died halfway through writing it. Forgive any grammatical errors.


End file.
